3/3 Site Specific Projects, The Boatshed, Berwick-Upon-Tweed, UK
Collaboration with Phil Dobson and Ben Grant
Field
2024
We were interested in ideas about deep time expressed in sediment moved by the water in the Tweed. Aiming to create a new field with the sediment we harvested and transported it to the Boatshed using special tools , a funnel and plastic piping. We were discussing the wide possibilities for the life a new field, including our belief it will become the starting point for a new country. Somewhere new inspires us to consider all possible systems and manifestations.
2/3 Site Specific Projects, The Boatshed, Berwick-Upon-Tweed, UK
Collaboration with Phil Dobson and Ben Grant
After the Deluge
2023
The installation was partly a proposition of a future when nature is being relived through incomplete memory or data. This desire to reconstruct nature, as if after the deluge, is initially despairing, but also gives us hope that humankind can undo the damage it has done to nature. The title refers to the materials used, the location and the theme of the show citing the redemption story of Noah in Genesis, the Ark possibly being a metaphor for gene banks.
Sky Boat Artist-in-Residence
Old Squash Court, Marchmont Creative Spaces, Greenlaw, Scotland
370 Million Years
2021
The work started as a response to differences in forestry work on the estate evident in two contrasting sites. One being the magnificent avenue of trees leading from the front of the grand 17th century house with carefully selected and tended trees, the other a disused railway that ran through the estate at the bottom of a steep bank south of the house and studios. The trees there were untended, mainly self seeded and bolted hedges and were generally left where they had fallen.
1/3 Site Specific Projects, The Boat Shed, Berwick-Upon-Tweed, UK
Jim's Fear of Being Forgotten Held Up in a Boat Shed
2020
I made this installation in an old boat shed during the first Covid lockdown. I tried to frame my thoughts as a journey inwards, reflecting upon my worth when human contact was drastically reduced. It started as I passed an old man sat outside his flat, he was sanding a chair when he shouted over “you’ve got to do something”, the following day he was painting the same chair, and shouted, “Well I can’t go anywhere so may as well”. It struck me that if all we had was ourselves, in our own environments, would we find a core of who we really are? Sound by Ben Grant.
Gymnasium Gallery, Berwick-Upon-Tweed, UK
Gentle Hills Slowly Moving
Part Two: Far Skerr Lime Kiln
2020
Far Skerr is a disused lime kiln on Cocklawburn beach, about 2 miles south of Berwick-Upon-Tweed. I had a strange emotional reaction to the remains at the edge of the beach; I felt sad and moved, as if I was watching a laid down giant, slowly sinking into the sand, the hope for things being better it represented now forgotten and left behind. I found concrete pieces on the beach and wired them onto the plinths so visitors could use tools to chip, scratch and file them. The stands were made form recycled fencing from Cote Syke Farm. The drawings I developed from rubbings I made on the stones of the kins.
Gymnasium Gallery, Berwick-Upon-Tweed, UK
Gentle Hills Slowly Moving
Part One: Flodden Hill
2020
More than 10,000 people were killed at Flodden during the English Scottish wars, when they were caught in the marsh created by the dip in the underlying rock. The marsh is now drained with a ditch to improve agricultural production. The paintings are copies of digital images taken jumping into and lying in the ditch. The interactive sculpture was built with recycled timber fencing and plastic sheeting from a silage pit at Cote Syke Farm.
Torriano Primary School, London, UK
Action
2020
I worked with young children to produce a display for their hall during the school’s Work Week. We knew many different types of jobs existed, so became interested in the actions we had to make with our bodies to complete tasks associate with each job. So, for example visiting police told us they spent lots of time walking, and our caretaker told us about sweeping. And our gardener told us about digging. We then used the same actions to make large scale art works.
Studio B, London, UK - Atelier Ouvert, Ajac, France - Various Private Collections, UK
Token Oaks
2018
'Walking, exploring and discovering' seem to ring of an idea of Englishness that stretches back to practises of early colonialists heading across 'foreign, unknown continents'; when the very national characteristics associated with the English oak tree were used to describe the very people heading into the uncharted ares of the world. Aware of these codes that give a particular meaning to Englishness, the work parodies exploration and discovery, and aims to (re)present the oak tree within a contemporary urban experience to think about our relationship to symbols that give raise to unmovable ideas of 'England'.
Art Shed Gallery and Studio, Lauriston Primary School, London, UK
A Bigger Picture
2013-2015
Collaborating with Chrisite's post grad curators and a school full of children to create a gallery and arts studio in an inner city London school we worked to create a programme of workshops and exhibitions aimed at fostering children's abilities to identify and make meaning through the inter-related processes of looking, comprehending and making.
South Hackney Parochial Trust, London UK
Prideaux House, London UK
South Hackney Archive
2013-14
Funded by the South Hackney Parochial Charity, this archive was created through the collaboration of local school children, Prideaux House, the musician Juwon Ogungbe and Mustard Architects. Using recordings of conversations with a group of elderly ladies, who met weekly at Prideaux House, the children composed songs about their experiences of living in Hackney, constructed a large 3D map of South Hackney and wrote ghost stories based on photographs they had taken of the local urban environment. The children performed their songs and read their ghost stories to the ladies in a specially arranged concert at their school.
Institute of Education, London, UK
Blu Worter
2009
An installation located in the Institute of Education, London. The work combined children's paintings of contemporary educational theory and resources from an early years classroom re-contextualised within a modernist gallery space. The displayed texts explaining the work to the students and professors were written 'phonetically plausible', making them tricky to decode. A uniformed security guard restricted access to random guests.
MoDA, London, UK - Limerick City Gallery, Limerick, Ireland - Walter Philips Gallery, Banff, Canada - Light House, Glasgow, UK
Bungalow Blitz: Design No.8
2001-2006
Design No8 was built as part of a joint project, led by the curator Aoife McNamara and included artists Andrew Kearney and Paul Antick, aiming to understand the inspiration and motivation for families living in rural west coast of Ireland to build bungalows during the 70's and 80's. The bungalows attracted criticism from architects and cultural commentators keen to idealise rural life and traditions, disregarding the real needs and experiences of people who made and continue to make these spaces meaningful. The installation Design No.8 was an attempt to build, within a specific time period, one of the original designs by the architect Jack Fitzsimons available in his book Bungalow Bliss (1976).
Galerie 101, Ottawa, Canada - Galerie Observatoire 4, Montreal Canada - Contact Gallery, Norwich, UK - Kirby Gallery, Knowsley, UK - Pilgrim Gallery, London, UK 1997- 2005
Pictures from an Ordinary Childhood
1997- 2005
A series of large history paintings based on images from my family's photograph albums. The work explored family events and their careful representation with photography as a passage to becoming a white, rural male in a lower middle class family.
Kirby Gallery, Knowsley, UK
Collaboration with Alice Wharton
Becoming Who You Are
2001
The exhibition was the result of a collaboration with Alice Wharton, then aged 90, who had lived in Kirby since it had been a village, surrounded by farms and open countryside. Alice had a very keen memory and enjoyed opportunities to tell stories describing her life often depicted in her collection of photographs. Her remarkable fluent handwriting became the focus of the paintings.
Gallerie SAW, Ottawa, Canada
Tableau Vivant
1995
A site specific public happening in which invitations were issued to the patrons of the National Gallery Canada and the Ottawa Art Gallery to attend the opening of Tableau Vivant: Another Piece of Fine Art by Jim Grant. Drinking champagne, and eating canapés, the patrons viewed a large steel dumpster placed in a car park. Images filmed on security cameras were displayed on a bank of monitors located on a busy city intersection.
Galerie Articule Projects, Montreal, Canada
Paradise Lost
1994
Supported by le Conseil des arts et lettres du Quebec this installation was located in a closed down foundry in Vieux-Montreal. The area was once a thriving industrial sector of the city and had recently been re-zoned for gentrification. Visitors were asked to change into industrial overalls before entering the main space which, in some places, was knee high in soot. The overalls were printed with the name of the installation. Installed inside the foundry were trunks of 30 recently felled trees (2.4-4.9m). The tree's trunks were split down the centre, hollowed out, the insides packed with pulp from a local recycling project and then strapped back together with 2 inch steel bands.
Galerie Observatoire 4, Montreal, Canada
The Sly Rhetoric of Neutrality
1993
An installation using materials found on the site of a recently demolished factory that had originally produced hats in the Saint-Henri neighbourhood of Montreal. The installation referenced the work of English land artists Richard Long and Andy Goldsworthy, known for arranging natural materials to construct simple shapes. A large circle of hand prints was created using an old can of Texaco grease discovered on the old factory site, and two lines were made using pieces of found concrete and old steel piping.